The spread of unfairness - mechanisms and boundary conditions

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Everyday life involves many situations in which people may feel that they have been treated unfairly. However, the consequences of unfairness do not always remain confined to a single relationship. A person treated unfairly by a supervisor, coworker, institution, or partner may subsequently make less favourable decisions affecting others who were not responsible for the original event.

The project “The Spread of Unfairness – Mechanisms and Boundary Conditions” examined the psychological consequences of unfair treatment. Its main objective was to determine whether and how unfairness experienced in one interaction affects subsequent decisions involving other people, including third parties who were not involved in the original situation. This phenomenon is referred to as generalized negative reciprocity.

The project comprised a series of experimental studies. Participants first experienced either a fair or an unfair allocation of resources and then made their own decisions about how money or tasks should be divided between themselves and other people. This approach made it possible to analyse not only participants’ reported evaluations and emotions, but, more importantly, their specific resource-allocation decisions following an experience of unfairness.

The studies addressed several interrelated issues. They examined whether people respond more strongly to unfairness when their reaction can be directed at the person responsible than when their next decision concerns a new, uninvolved individual. The project also investigated whether the consequences of unfair treatment can carry over between different types of resources—for example, from the allocation of money to a subsequent allocation of tasks—and whether these consequences depend on who is affected by the next decision or on whether the earlier unfair treatment resulted from another person’s deliberate action. A separate part of the project focused on the mechanism underlying the phenomenon. It examined whether treating another person less favourably is driven solely by the opportunity to improve one’s own material position or also occurs when it brings no personal benefit.

KEY FINDINGS

The findings show that experiencing unfairness can influence subsequent decisions involving other people, including individuals who were not responsible for the original event.

Participants responded more strongly when their next decision concerned the person who had treated them unfairly. They allocated fewer resources to the wrongdoer than to a new, uninvolved person. Direct negative reciprocity was therefore stronger than generalized negative reciprocity. The findings also suggest that having an earlier opportunity to respond directly to the wrongdoer may, under some conditions, reduce the influence of unfairness on subsequent decisions.

At the same time, the consequences of unfair treatment were also evident in decisions affecting third parties. Participants who had previously been treated unfairly were subsequently less likely to choose an equal allocation of resources. This effect occurred both when the original experience and the subsequent decision concerned the same type of resource and when the resource domain changed—for example, from financial resources to task allocations. The consequences of unfairness may therefore extend beyond the original context in which it occurred.

A particularly important finding was that participants allocated fewer resources to a third party even when doing so brought them no personal benefit. The spread of unfairness cannot therefore be explained solely as an attempt to compensate for an earlier loss or to maximize one’s own outcome.

The project also helped identify the limits of this phenomenon. Participants who had been treated unfairly were not more willing to incur a personal financial cost solely to worsen another person’s situation. Unfairness may therefore reduce people’s willingness to treat others favourably, but it does not necessarily lead them to take active, personally costly action against an uninvolved individual.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT

The project was conducted at the intersection of social psychology, economic psychology, and behavioural economics. Its findings help distinguish between several mechanisms that may produce similar patterns in resource-allocation decisions: a direct response to the wrongdoer, the passing on of unfairness to a third party, and an attempt to compensate for an earlier loss. The results demonstrate that resource-allocation decisions are not driven solely by calculations of personal gain. An experience of violated fairness norms may affect subsequent social relationships even when treating another person less favourably does not improve the decision-maker’s own material position.

The project also has potential societal relevance. In organizations, institutions, teams, and service relationships, unfair treatment may affect not only the relationship between the affected person and the wrongdoer, but also subsequent behaviour towards coworkers, clients, and other uninvolved individuals. At the same time, the findings show that the spread of unfairness has clear limits and depends on the structure of the subsequent decision-making situation.

A better understanding of these mechanisms may contribute to the development of social and organizational environments that reduce the risk of the consequences of unfair experiences being passed on to others.